We slept for a straight 12 hours on Sunday night and woke up to a very blustery Crosshaven. But feeling like new men. Today’s the day to get Heydays back to a semblance of normality…interesting to see how things changed places during the crossing.

The first task is to sort out the mains electric hook up, as each time we try to connect we end up tripping the whole pontoon…not the most effective way to make friends.

Witse, ever helpful, offers to run us to chandlers where we can get some parts if needed. In the end we  trace the problem to a faulty mains socket and sort the problem ourselves. A few other niggles sorted and we start to relax.  It turns out that no-one here is interested in paperwork or signing in of any sort…all very civilised. It seems that it is just the UK government which is demanding paperwork all over the place.

Monday night out in Crosshaven is something of a revelation. Last night we celebrated with a Guiness at the first pub we came to. Turns out that within a further 50 m there are another 3….and all doing seemingly well. Locals standing outside are unfailingly friendly….”hi lads, how’s it going?”

Our British “hi” feels inadequate.

The Irish sense of humour is never far away…

Cronins bar is where we end up , but they don’t do food on Mondays or Tuesdays….that’s no problem as the barman suggests that we get a takeaway and come back and sit with a beer. Fish chips, mushy peas and onion rings do a great job of soaking up the second round.

We’ve tried all three now…Guinness, Murphy’s and Beamish, the last two of which are brewed locally in Cork. James opts for Murphys, while John prefers the Beamish.

With charts spread out on the table we start to plan the next stages in a bit more detail….August should see us up the east coast, but what to see on the way?

Another couple of (slightly younger) old sailors stop for a chat…..and then stay for another beer. Charles and Dom have come from Milford Haven, and a bit like us  are not exactly shoestring sailors, but not the super yachties either. They are booked into the Royal Cork, but after a chat with us and hearing about the lovely Witse and his ‘interesting’ yard, they determine to move along in the morning.

A short while later, Dennis stops  by having seen our charts….and he stops for another beer…

He’s a mine of information and we talk harbours, anchorages and tidal streams to either use or avoid like the plague. As the beer slips down it becomes apparent that he’s a phenomenally accomplished sailor. He’s done the fastnet several times as well as the round Ireland. Both very testing races. We begin to wonder whether he is someone in the sailing world we should have recognised, when he asks whether we would deliver his boat to Falmouth in the next couple of weeks ready for the next Fasttnet. It’s an attractive proposition, but we’re both tied up domestically….ah well. He asks for our details and promises to get a friend of his from the “6 counties” to give us local info on yards and marinas for the winter.

A couple of Jamiesons rounds off a brilliant and incredibly friendly and welcoming evening.

Back on Heydays we google Denis Murphy to find indeed that he is a well known racer in his Grand Soleil 40 racing yacht Nieulargo…and is Rear Admiral of the Royal Cork Yacht Club.

Tuesday is a final clean and tidy and eating up the rest of the on-board perishables for brunch. Fried eggs, toast, tomatoes, smashed avocado…and even a light olive oil drizzle. Who says we can’t do posh??

Goodbye to Witse and wish him a happy retirement s he drops us at the airport and we throw ourselves at the mercy of Michael O’leary’s finest customer service to get us back to home…although Luton is not especially close to home.

Crosshaven has been a brilliant experience so far, with the kind of friendliness we’ve not experienced since we last sailed up the East Coast of England and Scotland…as well as being quite beautiful and quirky…

We plan to be back in Cork in early August to resume the voyage..

More thunder overnight and still a few rumbles early on, but mostly the day dawns bright and clear and still. We get the shipping forecasts for Sole, Lundy and Fastnet. Quite exciting compared to our usual Wight, Portland and Plymouth.

They are all the same which is comforting in a way, and they are forecasting variable 3 or less with occasional fog and thundery showers…not so good! Becoming 3 to 6 later.

With everything stowed for what could be a bumpy night, we head off to top up the diesel and the water. All a bit frantic by the quay, but we’re back in our routine and get everything done in 15 minutes.

We say goodbye to Chris and Yee Tak who are taking the Scillonian back to Penzance then trains home. We’ll fly back from Cork once the boat is safely tucked up.

Sliding away from the quay, we are sad to be leaving them behind, as we’ve had a brilliant 2 weeks cruise to the Scillies. The wind has been frustrating at times, but that doesn’t take away from just being back on the old girl.

With no wind at all, we motor out of the harbour and out past St Agnes once more and take the Northwest passage out of the islands. 

Morning turns to afternoon and we start to see the merest hint of some light airs from the west. With full main and genoa and a freshening wind, Heydays laps up the miles across the Celtic Sea.

We know our boat inside out after all these years, and we take a couple of rolls in the genoa for no discernable loss in speed, but a much comfier ride in a building sea in what is now a wonderful beam reach.

We heat up the remaining half of the lassagne for dinner as something warm to see us through the night.

The earlier delays due to the weather have meant that this, our longest leg of the trip, takes place during the shortest hours of darkness. Serendipity for once.

With the sun about to set, we reduce sail for the night, and despite this being June, we know all too well how cold the nights can get. So with thermals on, lifelines attached and some hot drinks lined up we see the last of the sun.

Our usual pattern is roughly 2 hours on watch and 2 hours kip through a night passage. At 11pm we still have some light, with visible horizons, but with no moon and just a few stars, the midnight watch is pretty dark. We’re glad we shortened sail as the wind gusts up to 23knots by 2 pm, and the sea has built into some short but steep waves just on the beam. Occasionally  a larger one than usual brings us up with a lurch, but the old girl just shakes herself off and ploughs on.

We shorten the genny around 2.30 and slow her down from the at times mad rush (for us) at over 7knots. The motion is instantly easier and less draining.

We are shadowed for a while by some sea birds, presumably expecting us to be gutting fish. They appear as just momentary flashes of white in the otherwise empty sea.

We’re grateful to have radar, but through the night it’s just us and the birds…

Amazingly, there is just the faintest of early light on the eastern horizon by 2.45 and a very thin sliver of moon appears behind the clouds.

The waves become clearer and then almost in the blink of an eye there is a real pink glow out east…

But with the dawn comes a strengthening of the wind and waves. There are gusts of 33kts and breaking seas which continually  push us off course.

We furl the genoa completely and that helps, but it is only when we put the third reef in the main that we are back to a feeling of normality. We hear the first of the Irish shipping bulletins and they are warning of strong winds around the entirety of the Irish coast.

As we edge closer to the coast we get a semblance of shelter from the headland and gradually we make preparations for landfall.

The entrance to the river up to Cork is quite pretty even in the grey skies, especially for such a commercial city.

We’re booked into a boatyard at Crosshaven, where we will leave Heydays for a few weeks and it is a lovely place….

We meet Witse who is the owner and a really nice guy.  It turns out that he is retiring at the end of the month and the yard has been sold to the Royal Cork Yacht Club next door…..but they will honour the quote he gave us!

The yard has clearly seen better days, but it has a certain charm, mostly down to Witse. We’re chatting about our plans and he said he may even get us to the airport to save on a taxi…..I bet the Rotal Cork won’t offer that!

With a brief weather window opening up to sail to Ireland on Saturday, this will be our last day on the Scillies, but already, we want to come back to explore some more.

We had hoped to book ahead into Kinsale, but there is the Round Ireland Race event on all week….just our luck. The harbour master is not totally committed as he makes us laugh, describing it as just an excuse for a week long piss up.

So Cork it will have to be.

But for now we head back to the main quay and pick up a little boat for a trip to Tresco, and St Agnes and Gugh. The day is incredibly humid and the thick fog comes and goes across the islands…

We land on Tresco  and head off past the helipad for the gardens.

Actually the scillies have had quite a chequered history. Subsistence farming and fishing was the norm, but they were badly affected by the civil war with Tresco itself changing hands several times. The nappleonic wars also worked against the islands with the result that by the middle of the ¹9th century, they had gone from subsistence to poverty. The entirety of the islands were leased from the Duchy by the Smith family and they made their home on Tresco. They built their house on the ruins of the old St Nicholas Abbey and were great plant collectors, resulting in the gardens as they are today….including red squirrels who have the place to themselves.

We meander across the island, but it feels a bit more ‘resorty’ than even St Mary’s.  There are a few vans, but otherwise they use what look like golf buggies to get around. On the other hand, there is also quite a bit of alternative lifestyle stuff going on…yoga, mindfulness etc.

Another indication of how Tresco compares to, say, St Martins is that on St Martins we had quiche and chips, while on Tresco it is all smashed avocado and olive oil drizzlers.

There are only 8 of us on the boat and being relatively small it can get in close to the rocks and shore. The skipper, Raif, takes us out to Minalto, which is uninhabited apart from hundreds of seabirds.  Guillemots, razorbills and Puffins sem to enjoy just bobbing around together…

A few seals watch us lazily, before we head off to St Agnes.

Today is the Scilly 60 ‘fun’ run, which as far as we can tell, involves running 60 k around several of the islands. We land on St Agnes just before 3 boatloads arrive to hare off for just 9 k here then back on for the final leg. Us…..we give them a jolly good cheer in between mouthfuls of the wonderful St Agnes ice cream.

The little primary school had 4 children up to last year, but ‘the twins have now left leaving just two. We wonder if eventually St Agnes with it’s population of just 84 will go the way of Sansom and the other now deserted islands.  Controversially, we wonder if there may be folk from less tenable parts of the world who would jump at the chance to revive places like this…..just wondering….

There is just a small causeway of sand between St Agnes and Gugh, so we ‘tick off’ another island…

Tomorrow we plan to trundle over to Cork, so we spend some time planning the passage….roughly 24 hours, and equally roughly 6 tides, which more or less cancel themselves out across the Celtic Sea.

The next two days are forecast to have strongish easterlies and thundery showers…but we also want to visit the other islands. This would mean leaving our snug and secure mooring and taking our chances at anchor. It’s not the anchoring which is a problem….it’s the lightning. There’s nothing like being in a thunderstorm with a big metal pole stuck up in the air. Where we are, there are loads of bigger and, more importantly, tall boats. We’ve noticed several boats coming in, all with the same idea, so we decide to stay put and make use of the many commercial boats that ply between the islands.

We book a trip to Tresco and St Agnes for Friday, so opt to take a trip to St Martin’s  today.

The population here is just 134, but with loads of self-catering places.  Actually, we notice lots of fields being left to go to bracken with attendant rusting farm machinery just lying forlornly around. Presumably, there are fewer young people staying to work, and small fields are just too labour intensive. It’s such a shame as the climate is amazing.

The little boat stops by the Scillonian first, and all the luggage of people staying on St. Martins is loaded. Then we all troop on and head out into some roughish water.

At the little landing stage near Higher Town, there are a couple of cars a quad bike and a tractor or two to take people and/ or luggage to their cottages or the hotel.  Completely incongruously, there is also a Porsche Cayenne….what is a fast car like that doing here?

We  stop at the delightful Little Arthur Cafe for lunch, where the crab quiche is amazing, but we hang about too long and find that the vineyard is shut. Oh well, a tasting flight  for lunch would have rendered us useless for the rest of the day.

We meander through Higher Town past flowery cottages and into Lower Town….a little lack of imagination we feel….

Some of the nicest ice cream we’ve had in a long time finishes off the afternoon. Troytown Ice Cream from St Agnes is brilliant.

Back on St Mary’s, we freshen up and have a light(!!!) supper of pasties before heading back into town to Jack’s Bar and have a brilliant acoustic evening performed by folk just turning up. .. really eclectic, from traditional Irish (Cornish?)  fiddle and whistle, to blues, to Blue Oyster Cult and even a Tom Waits soundalike….great atmosphere, even for a couple of electric rock and electronica fans…

Our decision to hang about on a mooring amongst taller masts is vindicated when a thunderstorm and some spectacular lightning flashes and crashes through at midnight.

Our first day in the Scillies dawns bright and sunny, or we suppose it did as none of us actually clocked the dawn.

We plan to mooch around St Mary’s today and then take in the other islands later in the week. The capital, Hugh Town, is like going back several decades,  but the harbour is buzzing with fishing boats and tourist tours.

Meandering the little streets, we’re struck by the flowers…it really has a little micro climate…

Elevenses in the Anchor then a little light souvenir shopping before lunch in a brillant cafe next to the gig racing club. We’re reminded of beach bars in Greece or Portugal.

The gigs, which seemed to have originated here, were originally used for smuggling or for collecting salvage cargoes from the many vessels that ran aground on the rocks and treacherous waters round these islands. It seems that communities on St Mary’s and St Agnes in particular became quite rich on this source of income, and many of the current buildings come from that period.

Lighthouses, built to prevent shipwrecks, became a source of irritation to the islanders, to the extent that the light on St Agnes was frequently ‘unavailable ‘!

We wander over to Porth Cressa and the old harbour for Hugh Town which is the island’s capital. We passed it on the way in, but opted for St Mary’s pool which is more sheltered from the forecast south easterlies. At the moment though, it is idyllic…

The rather hectic afternoon is spent with ice creams watching the general business of the harbour and the loading of the Scillonian, which is the island’s main link with the mainland. It is a very old fashioned process involving cranes and chains….none of your modern ro ro or containerised stuff here thank you.

A small fishing boat lands, and Yee Tak spies a crate full of something fishy. Her usual chat up of fishermen fails this time as all the crawfiah are ‘spoken for’ and will go to Newlyn for onward passage to Portugal. Interestingly, he called them crawfish, which we all thought was just an American term.

Back in the rubber dinghy to Heydays. and we have gin in the last of the afternoon sun.

Over on the beach, Wednesdays is ladies gig racing day and there are races at 7 and 8. There are 10 gigs out today in each race, so presumably there are at least 120 of St Mary’s  finest women for whom rowing is a major past time. The gigs nearly faded out after steamships and better navigation reduced the number of shipwrecks and therefore the resultant loss of salvage income, but now they are thriving as a sport and have even become international.

A couple of single handed sailors came in yesterday. They are on something called the Jester Challenge….Plymouth to Baltimore Ireland…and back presumably. They both look a bit knackered as light winds and/ or winds on the nose have meant that they have spent over 2 nights at sea with not a lot of sleep!

We are also moored next to an old classic wooden boat who, like us, are planning to head off to the Sciliies. We both resign ourselves to motoring most of the way in very light airs. Our purist guilt is slightly mollified when we learn that he is a very well known yachting journalist (ex of the Times) and writer for Classic Boats. He and his wife have cruised the west coast extensively and are not only well seasoned but also not afraid to burn some diesel.

There is a decent period of settled weather and we feel that it would be silly to lose the opportunity. So…into town for some of Aunty’s May’s pasties and some local saffron cake and then off.

The sea is calm and the diesel purrs away as we leave Newlyn behind in company with a few other boats. The auto helm is on, there are no sails to set. Just a watch kept for pot buoys….and so the day passes. The headlands and Minack Thestre slip past and we leave the mainland and the Longships lighthouse behind.

We reach Wolf Rock light and watch it slide past in the company of pasties and a cup of coffee. The temptation  on days like this is to keep snacking…and still the wind is on the nose…

We get our first sight of the Scillies and start to feel like we will actually touch them for the first time. We have opted to head for St Mary’s although another St Mary’s has a special place for half the crew! On match days, the red and white St Mary’s has around15 times the entire population of the island.

The different islands start to become distinct and we head for the rocky passage between Gugh and St Mary’s.

There are some easterlies later in the week so we’re heading for the western moorings or anchorages, accepting that there may be some swell left over from the previous winds. We don’t expect to find a mooring buoy, but take a turn round the harbour just in case…and there is one left!!! Here we are and a celebratory toast confirms our arrival.

The pasties for lunch were very filling so supper is just some eggs, cheese  and the odd dram or two of rum.

The sun goes down on a near perfect day in an amazing spot.

We had such a peaceful and serene night that we are almost sorry to leave this little
anchorage. But with coffee and breakfast on the go, we weigh anchor and slip out into the first of the morning ebb down the river. The day is rather overcast at first, but there are a few other boats on the move and we motor across a glassy sea in almost a dead calm.

We see a pod of dolphins in the distance, but again they seem more interested in
their fish supper than playing with us.
The Lizard opens up, and for the first time we catch a glimpse of what will be our most southerly point of the trip.

The wind picks up to a gentle breeze and we can at least set some sail and pretend…even though they don’t help much.
The headlands and small villages slide past and then, as we expected, the sea begins
to build into a slightly uncomfortable chop, reminiscent of late afternoons in the Solent when the sea breezes come in. The light and the rather lonely cottages pass by pleasingly quickly as we now have the benefit of the real ebb around the headland. As morning turns to afternoon, we also turn north and head out across Mounts Bay…

…the wind frees, the clouds just disappear and we have a glorious sunny fetch to Newlyn.

We arrive just outside and take the sails down, but feel slightly harassed by a large
trawler seemingly intent on beating us in.

We are directed to a berth on the shallow side of the harbour and with lines snug, we have a late lunch in a very sunny and almost too hot cockpit, washed down with the first cold beer of the day.
We loved Newlyn on the previous occasions, as it has a rather workaday but friendly feel about it…no pretentions. The Penlee lifeboat goes out on exercise and we are reminded of the old Penlee boat The Solomon Brown which went down with the loss of 8 lifeboatmen in 1981. That disaster led to the development of the new design of boats…

Newlyn has lost none of it’s character but it has invested in some new (and decidedly less fishhy) showers since the last time we came.  The only cloud is that the prices have more than doubled in the last 7 years!!! Personally I could cope with a fishy shower!

The harbour is glorious in the evening sun and the Fisherman’s arms doesn’t disappoint.

Sunday morning on the Fowey river and there’s bright sunshine and a very gentle breeze.
A few boats are out and about coming down the river presumably going out for a nice Sunday sail, something more energetic, or just to check a few lobster pots. The local inshore lifeboat crew are also up and about early doing some training.

But for us it’s a leisurely coffee or tea in bed and then an equally leisurely
breakfast sitting in the sun in cockpit.
Plan for today is to do a little bit of shopping to make sure that all the provisions are topped up, as the coming week seems to be good for the Scillies. We remind ourselves that in the Scillies, while not being entirely in the back of beyond, it’s not so easy to get things there, so we’ll fill up here and be set for the week. As for today I guess we’ll probably just mosey on across to the Helford river, which should be a nice little fetch in some fairly light winds rather than the thrash that we had yesterday.

We stroll into town to pick up some shopping and the smell of freshly baked bread and pasties wafts on the air. Lunch is now sorted!

We slide down the river on the early ebb with a couple of other boats and set sail for the Helford River in preparation for the next stage… then Newlyn, and then…..hopefully the Scillies.

Unsurprisingly for this trip, the wind veers earlier than forecast and it is once again dead on the nose. So much for a short hop and lunch in Helford.
The day remained stubbornly grey and overcast and the wind remained stubbornly on the nose, but the pasties went down a treat and were probably the best we have had in a very long time…..shout out to Nile bakery in Fowey….great pasties and lovely fresh
bread.

We opt for an anchorage just a short way up the river and drop the hook in 5m of water, not so very far from the steeply shelving rocky shore. It is a beautifully secluded and sheltered spot with just a few other boats around us and we settle in for a wonderfully lazy evening.